Facebook on Google+: 'They Don't Have Any Users'

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A Facebook executive said he's not worried about Google+ taking away a chunk of the lucrative virtual goods market. "They don't have any users."

Sean Ryan, Facebook's director of game partnerships, also told Fortune that the search titan is obviously copying Facebook's model -- and the reason Google+ is asking 5 percent of profits from game developers versus Facebook's 30 percent take is obvious. "Google is at 5 percent because they don't have any users."

While Google had no official comment on Ryan's statement, other than confirming its percentage off of social games, the Internet giant had other ways of getting at Facebook. Google owns YouTube, and suddenly a video appeared on Tuesday showing that Facebook could be blocking Google+ invites.

In the video, a Google employee (that Press:Here knows as Google Mobile spokesman Randall Sarafa) tries to post a Google+ invitation link on Facebook and it appears in his newsfeed. However, on a split screen, a Facebook friend does not seem to receive that link. The newsfeed seems to be ignoring the Google+ link while continuing to post all other status updates.

Is this a Facebook plot? Facebook toldCNET that it was "unable to replicate the experience (the video) shows" and that all links to Facebook highly scrutinized and may be filtered and show up later. If that's the case, then the more users linking to Google+ invites, the more the links are a known quantity and will show up . . . maybe.

What all this shows is that both companies are keeping close eyes on one another. And while Facebook is publicly laughing off Google+'s 25 million users (Facebook has around 700 million,) privately the company is likely deadly serious about the new upstart.